A person's sense of smell is more evocative of memories than any of the other senses, I've been told. I'm reminded of that during these warm summer days, when it is my habit to rise early and walk to a nearby all-night convenience store to fetch the daily papers, hot off the press. That distinctive summer fragrance, wafting over the empty streets as the sun is just coming up and everything is fresh for another day, reminds me of a time long ago when I also arose at 5 a.m. every day and went to get the newspapers. It was the same smell, except I was 11 years old and it was my job to deliver those papers to about 60 homes in the small town of Monmouth, Oregon.

Clad in cutoff jeans and a t-shirt, I'd hop on my beloved Schwinn bike, my trusty steed, and pedal to the old theater downtown, where bundles of the Oregon Statesman lay wired up and ready to blurt the news of the day to the citizens. The birds provided the only sound other than the whizzing of my tires on the street as I raced to perform my duty in the sparkling cool of the morning.

My first act upon arriving at the newspaper distribution site was to read the sports pages, particularly my favorite sports columnist, Al Lightner, who was then the Statesman's sports editor. After thoroughly briefing myself for the day on everything I cared about at the time, which was sports, and proud that I was at that particular moment the most sports-knowledgeable person in town, I spent about 15 minutes rolling and rubber-banding each of the papers except one for my parents.

I then would load up the orange canvas bag that hung over a rack on the front wheel of my bike and proceed along my route, tossing papers onto front porches with either hand, usually with unerring accuracy. On a Monday, when the papers were thin page-wise, it would only take me a half-hour to whiz through the job. Sundays were a different story. It was real work on those days.

Ever the opportunist, through the summer I used my paper route as a front for my real occupation: borrowing fruit. See, we'd just moved to Monmouth from Bend, in Central Oregon. Those were still the days before you could get produce year-round in the grocery store. In Bend, if fruit wasn't canned it usually wasn't available unless you were rich, and we weren't. Aside from some berry bushes and a few scraggly apple trees, not much was growing in that high desert climate in the summer. When we moved to the fertile Willamette Valley in the late spring, I thought we'd entered the Garden of Eden. Strawberries, cherries, peaches, pears, plums, apples and grapes! Heck, I'd never seen a grape grow. I thought they grew on trees. I quickly developed a bad fresh fruit habit. Couldn't get enough of it.

So, as the paper bag was emptied of papers it was slowly filled with borrowed fruit. I didn't steal it from people's yards, but I figured anything hanging over the fence, or that was in a vacant lot or next to a vacant house. was fair game. I usually collected enough to keep me munching constantly through the day as I pedaled around Polk County seeking adventure, a modern day Johnny Appleseed, tossing cores and pits and seeds along the country roadsides to grow snacks for future generations of boys on bicycles.

The job of delivering newspapers in the fragrance of a summer morning was one of the best I've ever had. The fringe benefits were incredibly delicious. Same job in winter? Well, that smelled like cold, rain-sodden grief done in the dark, and I don't want to talk about it.